1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 939 Belitung Island
The ownership of Belitung Island used to belong to a sultanate in central Sumatra, but after the Dutch settled in Batavia, in order to establish a safe route to Northeast Asia, they sent armed sailing ships to this area. It was cleared and a colony was established on the south coast of the island seven years ago, relying on the island's pepper growing for income.However, the East India Company’s ability to build and develop such island colonies was very limited. By the time Haihan attacked Abuna Island in 1631, the population of this colony, which was also a supply port in the South China Sea, was still the same as Abuna Island. There are no more than a thousand people, and the scale of development is even smaller than that of Ambuna Island in the same period.

It was not until the change of ownership of Ambuna Island that the East India Company began to expedite the dispatch of immigrants and armed personnel to the local area in order to prevent Haihan from continuing to go south to seize Belitung Island.So far, the population of the colonies on the south side of the island is about 3000, of which only one-tenth are Dutch, and the rest of the population is composed of Europeans of other nationalities, Malays, Hans and other races. Its ethnic complexity is almost the same as that of Ambuna Island.

Of course, it is obviously far from enough to rely on such a small population to fully control an island with an area of ​​nearly 5000 square kilometers, so although the East India Company unilaterally brought the island under its own control, in fact there are at least Seven or eight thousand aborigines live scattered in various places and belong to the autonomy of various tribes. It can be said that most of the island is still in a state of anarchy.

Geographically, Belitung Island is located about 400 nautical miles south of Ambuna Island and about 200 nautical miles south of Batavia. It is the only way for the Java region to go north and enter the South China Sea.If Haihan wants to suppress Batavia and control the Sunda Strait, this is obviously a better choice.The purpose of the United Fleet going to Belitung Island is more or less to investigate the actual situation here, collect the required information, and then the military general staff will evaluate whether it is necessary to seize the area and whether the conditions are ripe. The military force that needs to be invested and the defensive pressure that may be faced, etc.

Because the memorandum of understanding had been initialed with the East India Company, Fan Dimen also sent a group of people to go north with the fleet at the initiative of Yan Chujie. They provided supplies for the United Fleet, and on the other hand, they went to Anbuna Island in advance, where they made a foreground for the negotiations next month.

Taking advantage of the time when he was getting supplies at the port, Yan Chujie had someone on the boat conduct a simple survey of the local topography and sea conditions.The conditions in this place are very simple, and there are no decent coastal fortifications at all. Yan Chujie and others believe that as long as two or three companies of the army are deployed, and a few warships arrive close to the coast to provide fire cover, it will be enough to seize the port here. Take control again.However, what Haihan was really interested in was not here, so the United Fleet did not stay in the local port for too long, and immediately continued to head northwest along the coastline after completing the replenishment.

After leaving this small port, the sailboat carrying the Dutch envoys went straight north and returned to Ambuna Island. The next itinerary of the fleet is a military secret, and the opponent must not be informed of the information.

In addition to inspecting the colonies of the East India Company on the island, the United Fleet also had two tasks to complete here, one was prospecting, and the other was to inspect an alternative foothold chosen by the military.

In addition to pepper, Belitung Island also has a specialty of tin mines.In the time and space before traveling here, the tin produced on Belitung Island accounted for one-third of Indonesia's national tin production.However, in the original history, it was not until 200, more than 1851 years later, that the Dutch discovered and mined tin mines here. At present, this place is still in a state of no one's interest, which just left Haihan an opportunity to take advantage of.

The ductility of tin, a metal, can be used to make extremely thin tin foil, and it will not rust. It can be widely used in food preservation and anticorrosion. Tin cans are coated with a thin layer of tin on the iron sheet. With this After adopting this technology, Haihan can mass-produce canned food, which is of great practical significance both for people's livelihood and for the military.In addition, the chemically stable tin and its anti-corrosion characteristics will also bring great progress to Haihan's chemical industry.

In addition, bronze, which is widely used in military affairs, contains 5.00% tin.Haihan's current mine in Shilu already has a stable production of copper ore, and with the addition of tin ore, it is expected that the cast iron cannons equipped by the troops will gradually be replaced by bronze cannons with better performance and longer life.Tin brass, which is widely used on naval ships, is also an alloy composed of tin.

Of course, there is another use that cannot be ignored, that is, the movable type used in printing. The lead type in the general concept is actually a tin alloy.When this product is widely used in the printing industry, it is obvious that Haihan's cultural propaganda field can make great progress again.The cost of type printing is far lower than that of block printing, which is still commonly used in the Ming Dynasty. Although there are also printing workshops in Jiangsu and Zhejiang with self-made copper movable type and wooden movable type, their production capacity is far from the same level as that of Haihan. that's it.At that time, it is also expected that the printed products of Haihan Books will hit the Ming cultural market.

According to the information collected before crossing, there are a large number of open-pit-mined tin veins on Belitung Island, so this is another reason for Haihan to take this place.In the past, they didn't come to grab this place because Haihan's own strength was limited, and he couldn't reach Belitung Island. But now that Haihan's maritime strength in the Far East has clearly surpassed that of the Dutch, it is natural to seize similar islands step by step. Resources like Belitung Island are produced.

The fleet did not go too far after leaving the Dutch station. It walked westward for about [-] nautical miles and then approached the coast. It put down a few teams and went ashore to survey the surface conditions here.Of course, Zhang Yun would not miss this opportunity to go ashore for inspection, and went ashore with two apprentices carrying large and small bags on their backs.

The total population of the island of thousands of square kilometers is no more than [-] people, which can be regarded as sparsely populated, and the Dutch have "cleaned up" the indigenous residents on the island several times in the early years, so the indigenous tribes still on the island Basically, they gave up the vulnerable offshore areas and moved to the inland areas of the island to settle. Therefore, the landing site chosen by Haihan is basically no different from no man's land.However, in order to prevent some unexpected beasts from appearing on the island, Yan Chujie still sent a company of troops ashore to protect the two groups of people who were exploring mineral deposits and conducting biological research.

According to the map marks prepared in advance, the exploration team found two ore veins only a few kilometers away from the coastline without much effort, and collected dozens of kilograms of ore samples.On the contrary, Zhang Yun took his apprentice into the dense forest and didn't want to come out. He returned to the meeting place two hours later than the exploration team.

After the fleet left here, it circled the peninsula at the southwest corner of Belitung Island from the sea, and then turned to sail north.After about five hours of sailing, the fleet came to a river estuary.You can still see the remnants of the life of the former indigenous tribes here, but now it has become a no-man's land under the repeated suppression of the Dutch.

This place is the base chosen by the military. Although the estuary here is not very wide and the size of the port that can be built is still relatively limited, there are relatively concentrated tin ore veins in the upper reaches of the river. Water conservancy conditions can be used to transport ore to the seaside for processing.Of course, if the conditions are ripe in the future, a freight railway can also be built between the smelting workshop and the mine by the sea in the same way as the Shilu Iron Mine was developed.The length of this railway is much shorter than the line from Changhua to Shilu, and the straight-line distance is only about a quarter of that, and the construction cost will be reduced a lot accordingly.

After the fleet docked at the mouth of the river, they built simple sheds on the spot.Zheng Zuo and Fan Ji, who didn't know the news beforehand, felt very strange about this, and asked Haihan respectively why they built a temporary residence here.Haihan's answer was also very straightforward, and he planned to settle here and build a colony.

Both Annan and Zhancheng understand the reason why Haihan has meat to eat. Although they don't understand the specific reason why Haihan chose this place, since they have already built temporary residences here, it means that it is not a joke. Now that you hit it, it will be your fault if you miss it again.Immediately, the two also returned to the boat, and transferred a team of men to station on the island—send some people to help you guard it. Anyway, if you want to develop here, then I will drink some soup.

As for the East India Company, which originally claimed ownership of the island, who cares what the Dutch think at this time.Zheng Zuo and Fan Ji both attended the negotiation between Fan Dimen and Yan Chujie a few days ago, and they are also very clear about the current strength comparison between the two. The Dutch almost lost even Batavia, so how could they have the energy to come to Belitung? island.Besides, the Haihan people chose to settle here, and it seems that they are not in a hurry to drive out all the Dutch on the island, so the possibility of war breaking out is not high.Since the risk is not too high, then this investment is worth trying. The unknown is nothing more than the level of return. Anyway, with the vision and means of Haihan people, you will never lose money if you follow them to do business.

Compared with the previous landing surveys, the work done by the Haihan Army here is much more detailed. Roger personally led the special operations brigade he trained to escort the mine exploration team to march upstream along the river and enter to the outback.

Fortunately, the indigenous tribes who originally lived in this area seem to have completely abandoned it, which relieved Roger, who had been tense all the time.However, the exploration work in this area is scheduled to take three to five days, so Roger still has to keep his men and horses sufficiently vigilant during this period.

But after entering the inland, it was not the expected natives, nor the poisonous insects and beasts in the forest that caused the biggest trouble for this team, but the continuous rain.The rain made this small river with a small flow turbulent, and the travel route along the river area was often interrupted by swamps, ponds and even streams that appeared after the rainfall. For this reason, Roger's team had to detour Only after a certain distance can we go to the intended target area.

"This damn weather!" Roger looked up at the rainy sky and cursed bitterly.Although he wore a raincoat and waterproof boots, he was not soaked by the rain, but his soldiers were not so lucky.Most people's coir raincoats have been soaked by the rain, and the straw sandals and cloth shoes on the feet have no resistance to the wet forest floor, and soon become a burden on the feet.

The logistics department has already developed a new type of military raincoat covered with rubber coating, but the output of this high-end product is still frighteningly low. Even Qian Tiandun's special warfare battalion has only been allocated a small amount of experimental equipment. Don't even think about applying for this kind of place.

In this era, there are no quick-acting cold medicines. Once you catch a small cold in this tropical rainforest, it is likely to develop into severe diseases such as typhoid, malaria, and pneumonia in a short period of time, and you may even suffer from it. And die.Roger has been in the South China Sea all year round, and of course he has seen many cases where slaves who lacked medical care and medicine died because of this, so he was still very anxious about carrying out this task of marching in the rain and having to be stationed in the wild for several days .

Two days after departure, Roger had to lead the team back to the camp by the sea.Due to the weather, there was no dry firewood that could be used as fuel in the dense forest in the inland area, and there was no way to build enough camp beds so that the soldiers would not have to sleep on the wet ground. In just two days, several people showed up Have cold symptoms.Roger didn't dare to be careless. If this disease spreads in the army, the rate of non-combat attrition will be very fast. At present, he can only return to the base camp and let the troops rest.

As a result, the time spent on Belitung Island had to be extended backwards.After discussing with several high-level officials, they decided to wait here for another week. If the rain still shows no signs of stopping, they should abandon this exploration mission and find another suitable time and opportunity.

Fortunately, God seems to have favored this team. On the fifth day, the seemingly endless rain finally stopped without warning.Although it is difficult to know how long this temporary fine weather can last, Roger still led the team to set off again without hesitation.But this time Yan Chujie allocated all the portable waterproof tents he brought to Luo Jie, and also allocated more than a dozen mules and horses to carry the baggage—all clean coal unloaded from the flagship.Packed in bamboo baskets and wrapped with tarpaulins outside, if it starts to rain again after entering the forest, the clean coal can at least temporarily provide a warm and dry space for soldiers to rest at night.

(End of this chapter)